BARNSTABLE 5TH DISTRICT: Randy Hunt, R-Sandwich

Edward F. Maroney

Thursday

Oct 21, 2010 at 2:00 AMOct 21, 2010 at 8:16 AM

Randy Hunt grew up in El Paso, but he doesn’t fit a New Englander’s stereotype of a tough-talking Texan. The Sandwich CPA is calm and detail-oriented as he marshals his case for sending another Republican to represent the 5th Barnstable District on Beacon Hill.

Randy Hunt grew up in El Paso, but he doesn’t fit a New Englander’s stereotype of a tough-talking Texan. The Sandwich CPA is calm and detail-oriented as he marshals his case for sending another Republican to represent the 5th Barnstable District on Beacon Hill.

Hunt, who’s served Sandwich on its finance committee and board of selectmen, notes that towns have to live within their budgets. He contrasts that reality with what goes on at the Statehouse, where legislators can raise taxes at will.

The candidate to succeed his good friend, state Rep. Jeff Perry, gained wide-ranging experience as a top financial officer for companies before opening his private practice on Cape Cod. He learned about careful management of resources in good times and bad, and would like the state to learn to do the same.

“The government should be for our security,” Hunt said. “A lot of things have been tacked on over hundreds of years.” Government, he said, must “help people who can’t help themselves, but not those who can help themselves and don’t want to help themselves.”

If government were to stay as small as possible, Hunt argues, there would not only be more resources in the private sector to drive the economy. There also would be ways to provide services to the truly needy.

“We have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the country,” said Hunt, who feels Massachusetts is losing locally developed talent and ideas to production facilities in other states.

The candidate said jobs and the economy is the top issue in the election, and he has three areas – the cost of health care and health insurance, taxes, and regulation – where he would concentrate if voters send him to Boston.

The state’s health plan, which this Republican doesn’t hesitate to call “Romneycare,” “did nothing to reduce costs,” according to Hunt. He said an IRS chart lists Massachusetts as having the highest small group family health plan costs in the country.

The state should not force residents to take on comprehensive health plans that may have no relevance, Hunt said, such as those that require pregnancy coverage for middle-agers.

Hunt said the state should change from 10 to 50 the minimum number of employees that requires employers to offer health insurance. “We’re gonna do that anyway” in 2014 under the national health care law, he said.

The reintroduction of co-pays is another way to cut costs, Hunt said, one that would require policyholders to think twice about seeking care “every time they sneeze.”

On the tax front, Hunt supports the ballot question that would roll back the sales tax from 6.25 percent to 3 percent. “Raising the sales tax did not help small business,” he said.

Opponents of the ballot initiative say it will cost the state $2.5 billion. Hunt recognizes that expenses would have to be cut, both to replace at least some of that revenue and to grapple with a multi-billion-dollar structural deficit. He’d look to reorganize, for example, state agencies that issue a variety of permits but have staff that perform similar functions. “There are 100 agencies that deal with 1,000 licenses, registrations, and permits,” he said.

The Mass Health program needs to provide more managed care to reduce costs, according to Hunt, and the Legislature needs to repeal laws that prevent outsourcing of state operations and limit project bidders to union organizations.

Having worked on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, Hunt says he’s doubtful about the value of erecting a barrier there. Putting up a 50-foot-high wall, he says, will result in a market spurt for 52-foot ladders.

That said, Hunt believes immigration laws should be enforced, through an e-verify system advanced by the first President Bush. “You do have to have workplace enforcement,” he said. “If you dry up the work and the benefits for people not properly here, people will stop coming over.”

Hunt is pro-life, but said he recognizes that “Roe v. Wade is the law of the land. I’m not going to Beacon Hill to overturn that.” As for capital punishment, “I don’t buy that either,” the candidate said. “It’s inconsistent if you say you’re pro-life but that it’s right to kill people. It’s a worse thing for people to sit in prison without chance of parole.”

Hunt echoed a familiar stance on the advantages of being a member of the minority on Beacon Hill. “Democratic freshman legislators are not gonna get a chance to say what committees they’ll go on,” he said, whereas Republicans, fewer in number, are spread thinner and have a better chance of ending up where they want to be. Being perhaps just the second CPA in the House, Hunt said, would be another advantage.

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